Hate is a Burden
by rainaftersnowplease
Summary: Some slightly angsty Mikaannie for Femslash February. There's some blood and mild body horror inside! One-shot.


Happy Femslash February, my friends! Here you have my first contribution for the month, featuring one of my favorite non-canon pairings from Attack on Titan.

Fandom: **Attack on Titan**

Verse: **Canon**

Pairing: **Mikaannie**

Rating: **SFW** (there is some blood and mild body horror, however)

Words: **1,184**

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**Hate is a Burden**

They hate each other.

Fire doesn't kill titans, and the wildfire of gossip in the trainee camp does nothing to slay this rumor. It's hardly a rumor anyway: one look at their sparring bouts tells the whole story plain enough for even Eren to take notice.

Mikasa is the better fighter. Annie knows it, though it doesn't stop her from slapping the dust from her trousers and hunching low behind her guard again whenever Mikasa knocks her off her feet. She gets her shots in. Mikasa is quicker, but Annie is stronger, and sometimes the blows she hurls against Mikasa's iron-clad guard manage to transfer some force beyond it.

Mikasa doesn't show anyone the splotches of yellow and purple that decorate her forearms in the days following their bouts. Annie's cut lips and bruised cheeks she wears with the same savagery that cuts her mouth into her natural scowl.

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They hate each other.

Everyone gets a little crankier after their 3DMG training begins. It takes a few intensely uncomfortable runs in the forest for them to set their straps just where they ought to be. After that, they get their racing stripes: thick cords of permanent bruising that crisscross their legs and chests and turn waxy like scars.

Mikasa is the better 3DMG pilot. Annie doesn't care until Mikasa steals a kill right from under her blades. She considers following through with her intended strike anyway, severing Mikasa's tethers, or lodging some steel into one of her gas canisters. But she's gone from Annie's reach in a flash of flapping red and Annie jams her thumb into her maneuver controls to zip off in the other direction.

Later that night, when she knows Mikasa has laundry duty with Eren, she stalks into the wash house. Mikasa is alone. Of course she would send Eren to bed early. Like a mother hen. Annie makes a sound like chewing gravel. Mikasa pauses hunched over a laundry tub.

The laundry is small, cramped like everything else in the camp. It's little more than a clapboard shack, wide enough for two people (or three if Connie or Christa have duty) and their washtubs. The cold whistles through slats in the siding.

"You wouldn't have been able to hit me," Mikasa says, returning to her scrubbing. Annie grits her teeth. Sloshing again fills the small space.

She lunges, but Mikasa is quicker than she is. Before she can do more than cock her arm back, Mikasa slides one leg backwards, spearing Annie's plant foot out from under her body. Mikasa pivots on her other foot, clutching the lapel of Annie's uniform vest and twisting them both down to the ground.

Annie slams into the washtub. It buckles under her; its rusted hoops snap and break. The wood gives way, dirty water flooding the dirt floor and turning it into mud that seeps icily into Annie's clothes. Mikasa flattens her forearm across Annie's chest, bearing down on her. Excitement flashes down Annie's spine, shivering through her like the cold.

There are no officers here to call off this fight.

"Try again if you want," Mikasa stares down at her, voice and eyes flat. "You'll never beat me."

"Fuck you," Annie offers in return. Something glints for an instant in Mikasa's eyes, but it's gone again before Annie can figure what it is.

"I finished your uniform already," Mikasa says. "You can leave the one you have on here. One more won't take long."

Annie doesn't quite know what to make of that, so she falls back to her old standby of angry indifference. Though she does change into her clean uniform before she leaves Mikasa to finish her chore alone.

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They hate each other.

And she hates admitting it, but Mikasa is fun to work with. In the forest, she's a shadowy, red-tinted blur, and always where she needs to be. Annie doesn't even need to signal to her – she slashes at a training titan and half a beat later, Mikasa zips over her kill to check the depth of the cuts.

She hopes Eren gets into the Scouting Legion, so Mikasa will be far away from any military police posts after they graduate. Mikasa is the better soldier – Annie doesn't need it rubbed in her face.

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They hate each other.

And Annie has Mikasa to blame for the throbbing pain in the back of her mouth. The tooth is chipped and clearly going to be infected. The black, solid bruise across her cheek fades within a week, but the molar continues to aggravate her. She stops sleeping nights. Stops trying to sleep through the pain. But she can't pull the tooth herself, no matter how many nighttime hours she spends in front of a greasy bathroom mirror, screaming at herself in silence for being such a coward.

On the third night, when she's mid-monologue and preparing to grip the tooth again with shaking fingers, she gets company.

"I could pull it for you, if you want."

"This is all your fucking fault," she gripes, but the proposal is too logical to ignore. Mikasa won't give a shit if the pulling hurts, and giving a shit about the pain is what's been preventing Annie from doing it herself.

"Fine," she turns to Mikasa. "It's on the bottom of my right side, second from the left."

Mikasa strides to her, until Annie can feel a bit of her body heat radiate through the icy air. Annie opens her mouth wide, but Mikasa's fingers find her left cheek first. They glide over her skin there, licking like fire.

Annie's next breath shakes out of her lungs.

Mikasa presses her fingertips gently into Annie's cheek, tilting her head up a bit so some light from the naked bulb above them spills into her mouth. She squints down into it. Annie tries to keep her tongue still.

"Don't bite me," Mikasa warns. Annie grunts her understanding. Accidentally biting Mikasa might be the only thing worse than accidentally biting herself in this scenario.

Mikasa moves her free hand into Annie's mouth, feeling gingerly for the cracked tooth. She grips it between her thumb and the second knuckle of her index finger.

"I'll count to three," she says. Her voice lilts upwards on the last word. Annie stares down her upturned nose at her. Mikasa does not ask very often.

"Oh-ay," she manages to tongue against the hand in her mouth.

"One," Mikasa's grip on the tooth tightens. "Two."

She pulls. Hard. The tooth comes free from Annie's gums with a wet ripping sound. Annie wrenches herself away from Mikasa, squatting in the dirt and clutching at her own mouth. Blood flows over her teeth and onto the hand she uses, and she screams into it, the sound muffled by her own fingers. Her eyes are wide and watery. Her shoulders shake.

Mikasa flattens a hand in the middle of her back.

Annie feels her skin cool.

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They hate each other.

But when Mikasa cuts her clean and gives her an order to fall, part of Annie wants to laugh.

She fell a long time ago.


End file.
